Days Gone By
by everfaraway
Summary: Backstory for "The Biggest Secret of All". Clint Barton: a partially deaf sniper from a broken home. Phil Coulson: Clint's friend & superior with an obsession with Cpt. America. Zachery Stonebrook: a massive man with a massive heart of gold. Three men with three different stories, all of which intermingle to make them a part of one very strange family.
1. Brothers

Brothers

**_Author: My story featuring Clint, Tasha & their daughter (my OC) Illyana & her uncle (also OC)  
Zachery Stonebrook has been extremely popular. Was not expecting that so thanks for all of the  
reviews, favs & follows. Since we all love Phil & I wanted to explore the relationship between the  
_****_"family"more, I wrote this. I own everyone but Phil & Clint. And I am using actual military bases.  
_**

A lighter flicked open, stayed lit briefly then was extinguished with a soft click. The ember of a cigarette glowed in an otherwise mostly dark room.

"So who is he?" a soft but rough voice tinged with a midwest accent asked, following a quiet exhale and a stream of smoke that coiled towards the ceiling.

"Are you jealous?" a second voice, this one with a tell-tale New York bite in it, teased from the other side of the room.

"Jealous? Of who?" the first voice scoffed.

"I think his name is Zachery Stonebrook. Heard he's a transfer over from Carson. Colorado." the New Yorker muttered.

"What the hell? Is Carson dumping their douche bags on us?" the smoker asked, sitting up.

"Hey Master Sergeant Logan transfered from Carson a few years ago."

"And he's a douche bag! Admit it Phil. Admit it!" Playfulness laced the smoker's voice.

The man known as Phil shook his head at his companion. "You're going to dig yourself a hole you can't get out of someday with that mouth of your's Clint." he said.

"What can I do? My middle name's trouble." Clint chuckled, blowing smoke in his friend's direction.

"Really? And I thought your middle name was Francis." Phil smirked.

"C'mon. Let's go get a beer." Clint said, pulling on his jacket and sunglasses. He ignored the comment about his middle name.

Phil zipped up his jacket and followed Clint out of the barrack into the early spring snow that had settled over Malmstrom AFB, Montana. It didn't bother either of them too much since they were both northern boys. Phil had been born in Boston but raised in New York. Clint had been born and raised in Iowa until he was was orphaned.

The two men were close friends but as different as night and day.

Clint was broad shoulders, blonde hair, was quiet and anti-social (on his best days) but extremely loyal. That was what Phil liked best about his friend but not what he admired most about him. Clint's eyes were an eerie shade of hazel that almost glowed, which he often hid behind sunglasses when he could. Those eerie hazel eyes also were what made him such a dangerous sniper. The man had better than 20/20 vision, especially at a distance. When Clint did decide to speak, it was mostly smart ass comments or somesort of joke.

Phil, on the other hand, was: slender, dark haired, blue eyed, talkative but deceptively strong. Even though he was about two or three years younger than Clint, he felt protective of the older man. The haunted look in his friend's eyes and the scars he wore were not lost on Phil. Clint's childhood had not been an easy one and it had left him insecure and leery.

Not to mention Phil had figured out the other man's secret shortly after they had been assigned to the same barrack: Clint was partily deaf. According to the sniper, his ear drums had been partially ruptured when he was three by his abusive alcoholic father.

And every year his hearing was getting worse.

So Phil was becoming his ears.

**_Author: Slight changes made_**


	2. Best Kept Secret

Best Kept Secret

**_Author: Tired, so gonna make this quick. Only own Zachery & nameless bartender. Shooting scene like  
_**_**the one in SWAT (where Hondo is training new team to shoot). Clint's height & weight are: 6ft 3 & 230lbs.  
**_**_Since this is about 15 years earlier than my previous fic (where he is the above height & weight), he is about  
_****_210lbs. Cookies go to whoever catches the other Marvel Character who makes a cameo this chapter._**

Phil looked over his shoulder when the bar door opened and the room fell quiet. Very few things could make a bar of rowdy military men go quiet. "Clint." he called, not taking his eyes off the man who stood just inside the door.

"Man's a fucking monster." the bar tender whispered.

Clint growled softly when someone tapped his side. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that the offending object was a pool cue. "What?" he grumbled, turning his gaze back to the pool balls on the table in front of him.

"Yer keeper's callin'." came a rough voice from over his right shoulder. The smell of cigar smoke invaded his nose and he knew immediately who the speaker was.

Master Sergeant Logan.

The only bastard who smoked cigars on the entire fucking base. He was also one of the few people Clint didn't dare mouth off to. Only two things could make him bite his tongue around people: fear and respect.

And he regarded the dark haired, cigar smoking, surly as fuck man with a mix of both. Though the mix was a little bit more heavy on the side of fear than respect.

"Can I help you?" Phil asked, eyeing the man who had walked into the bar carefully. The stranger was huge: seven foot at least, built like an ox with dark brown hair and skin almost as dark as the night itself.

"Staff Sergeant Zachery Stonebrook. Just transfered over from Carson."

"Sergeant First Class Phillip Coulson. Welcome to Malmstrom." Phil told him, glancing over his shoulder briefly towards the pool tables.

"Nice to meet you sir." Stonebrook said, saluting quickly when he realized the man he was addressing was in a superior officer.

Clint cocked his head slightly as he walked up to join Phil. The stranger's voice was a deep rumble to his ears but he could just make out the words in the rumble. "Who is this?" he asked.

"Staff Sergeant Zachery Stonebrook. He's the transfer from Carson." Phil said, turning to face Clint. He felt a bit more at ease now that the other man was close.

"Staff Sergeant Clinton Barton." Clint told him. He regarded the new comer carefully. Stonebrook had almost a foot on him and probably at least fifty pounds on him. But Stonebrook was a stranger in the bar while many of the men knew Clint and Phil well. Well enough to have their backs in a fight at least.

"Barton is also one of the best snipers on base. Some of us even have taken to calling him Hawkeye." Phil smirked, glancing at Clint.

"Pardon the pun but I'd like to see why. If you don't mind?" Zachery asked. He looked right into the other Staff Sergeant's eyes, noting their strange shade of gold.

Clint glanced over at Phil and smirked. It wasn't very often he got to show off for new comers. "Let's go to the shooting range." he told them.

"Fair warning: his eyes are not the main reason we call him Hawkeye." Phil told Zachery, as he passed him a pair of binoculars.

"I would assume not. They're that color naturally?" Zachery asked.

"That's what he tells me." the smaller man said.

"Same deal as always?" Clint called over his shoulder, settling on a thermal blanket not far away.

"You miss and you take your promotion!" Phil agreed.

"What if he doesn't miss?" Zachery whispered.

"He doesn't take the promotion and I continue to be the voice in his ear." Phil told him, looking through his binoculars up at the cliff side about a mile from them. One by one the half dozen targets, helium ballons tied to spikes hammered into the cliff several miles up, exploded as the bullet's pierced them.

"Holy shit. Why haven't we heard of him at Carson?" Zachery asked.

"He's Malmstrom's best kept secret." Phil laughed as Clint tossed the sniper rifle over his shoulder and got up to join them.

"That was... amazing." Zachery told Clint when the marksman had returned to them. Clint said nothing, just pulled his hood up in embarrassment. He wasn't used to being praised by an almost complete stranger.


End file.
